CAN BUILDINGS CHANGE AMERICA?

Check out this great PBS program (and its associated online content) called

10 Buildings That Changed America.

What do you think?  Can what we build elicit change?

Can buildings change:

• how we live (sprawl)
• how we work (manufacturing)
• how we travel (stress)
• how we see ourselves as Americans (not subject to monarchy)
• whether we ourselves only as Americans or also as citizens of the world (internationalism)
• whether we are prepared to accept complexity in place of perfection (postmodernism)
• whether our community feels well-established or unstable (Romanesque)

             ?

Virginia State Capitol by Thomas Jefferson
Image courtesy of jimbowen0306 via Flickr

Three Notes:

1.  The film shows that Wright worked under Sullivan; but Sullivan also worked under Richardson and Venturi worked under Eero Saarinen.

2.   I learned something, too: I had no idea that the "regional indoor shopping mall" was originally intended as an alternative to sprawl.  Seriously?

3.   Postmodernism can literally offer a cartoon version of history: Graves's Disney HQ in Burbank casts the seven dwarves as caryatids.

-ally